Ehime city turns to big data for matchmaking

Great stuff Ehime. Encouraging indigenous Japanese to meet, marry and have children is a good thing.

Japan's demographics are a security issue in the face of a belligerent China and measures like this help.

They need to address the real issue people are not marrying in Japan and that is the ridiculous expectations on working hours. How you think old Kenji has any sex drive or willingness to go out and meet women after working 6 days in a row of 12 hour days?

I think this is based on the false premise that a happy marriage will produce more children. In my personal experience, it's actually the happiest and longest marriages that often end up being childless.

It's the struggling marriages that sometimes produce more chidren. Such as where the woman wants to have a child just to make sure the man doesn't leave her, or where the man wants a son to play baseball with so that he doesn't have to spend more time with his wife on weekends. The truly happy couples that enjoy eachothers company often don't want to risk a child destroying what they have.

Do they actually know what big data is, I highly doubt the perhaps 50,000 people registered on here is "big data"... come talk to me when you have billions of records.

Japan's demographics are a security issue in the face of a belligerent China and measures like this help.

What goes around comes around, and Japan's ills are of its own making. Consequences usually catch up with you sooner or later. Same for China perhaps, but I guess we'll have to see over the longer term.

Encouraging indigenous Japanese to meet, marry and have children is a good thing.

And of course, encouraging non indigenous as well.

As usual, they would never ask themselves why people don't get married and have kids.

The system now logs members' participation in matchmaking events and their browsing history on the website

I'm not sure that actually qualifies as "big data" in the ordinary meaning. Big data involves gathering much more indirect information and number crunching it with AI and fuzzy analysis so that hidden trends emerge. It sounds like they are using the "big data" expression because it is trendy, even though it makes the headline sound a bit scary.

Note that gathering actual big data with the help of Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. would probably get a frighteningly good picture of what a person is like and which potential partners would be suitable, but would have huge privacy concerns. We'd be well into Big Brother territory.

I suspect that government employees promoting marriage would be more successful if they spent all of their time enforcing labour laws about overtime and people taking time off.

240 volunteers and 228 marriages.

Just an observation, but this is being conducted by prefecture governments with the idea of "get married and live and reproduce in our prefecture". For Hyogo to do it in Tokyo sounds like a very hard sell.

Getting married in Japan can involve huge commitments to children, local communities, elderly in-laws, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if some people dread them more than they long to share their life with someone.

Somewhat myopic comments here. The fact is that a lot of socially awkward Japanese need a hand in meeting the opposite sex. Good on you Ehime!